The Bad News Parent

Despite some obvious social anachronisms, 31 years later, the original Bad News Bears movie holds up well as a quality film.

This weekend presented a few learning moments for me as a parent. First of all, my 7-year-old boy got injured from a hockey puck. You non-hockey parents out there are probably wondering why someone would even let his children play hockey. Trust me, the dad in me that wakes up early most Saturdays and Sundays to drive to games all over Western Massachusetts and even in Vermont and Connecticut knows you have a good point. But on this day, the injured party was not playing hockey. He was merely hanging out at a hockey rink while the UMass men's team was practicing, and he got struck by an errant puck.

That, however, is not what this story is about. (FYI, though the UMass trainer thought my son would need a couple of head stitches, the ER doctor decided to let him home sans needlepoint.)

No, this story is about trying to cheer up someone who was hit with a puck who everyone thought would need stitches in his head. What we needed was an eveningtime diversion. A movie. A good, classic comedy that would make us laugh and forget about our head wounds.

I had often talked about the original Bad News Bears movie, which came out in 1976. My mom took me to see it. I laughed my head off and probably saw it a few times since then -- most likely on TV with all the bad words cut out. Before renting it, like any good parent, I checked the back of the box: PG. Of course, I realized later that meant old-school PG before PG-13 was invoked as a tweener rating, buffering PG from R. Oops.

There were language issues and bird-flipping. More troubling and perhaps a testament to how far we have come since then, there were fairly flagrant gay, religious and and racial slurs that would probably not make it into a PG or PG-13 movie today. I guess you can say these lines were more satirical in nature, with an All in the Family, style let's-poke-humor-at-the-ignorant-characters feel to them. Still, they were tough to sit through.

Then there were the omnipresent nods to acceptable alcoholism. All of this made me wince. More conservative parents would probably wince harder and more often, I readily admit. I am wondering how closely the remake with Billy Bob Thornton held true to the original, especially in terms of these anachronistic moments. Did I mention no one wore seatbelts or motorcycle helmets and that one of the main kid characters smoked like a chimney?

All that said, the movie went over fairly well in our household, and we are still talking about parts of it days later.

But this is where the diciest parenting part came in.

I shudder just thinking about a scene like this in the future.

See, my 3 1/2-year-old daughter (trust me, the half is being paraded out here in a blatant plea for at least partial clemency) also watched along with all of us. I mistakenly thought she would fall asleep early, but nope, thanks to a lengthy afternoon nap and an apparent burgeoning auteur appreciation, she made it all the way to the final credits.

After the flick was over, as we usually do, the whole family started discussing the movie: favorite characters, favorite scenes, best lines, etc.

Tanner was one of my son's favorite. Englebert was another's. Amanda, the Tatum O'Neal character, was someone else's. (OK, that was me, a crush that still holds true 31 years later.)

But then my daughter chimed in: "I liked the boy on the motorcycle. He was my favorite. He was cool."

Uh-oh.

And I wish I could say it ended there. But on Sunday, my daughter came down to breakfast and told me she had a dream. Hearing her describe her dreams is by far one of my favorite parts of any day. Not this day.

"I dreamed that boy on the motorcycle from the movie came over to our house, and you and mom were not here. He took me for a ride on his motorcycle. We had fun."